


Nothing Fucks with My Baby

by alecmagnuslwb



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Sort Of, john being in awe of zatanna's power and just her in general, other characters make little appearances or are mentioned, some oc villains as well, zatanna zatara is the strongest magic in the dcu and i will always believe it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29007255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alecmagnuslwb/pseuds/alecmagnuslwb
Summary: Her power is immeasurable, unstoppable and the most stunning thing he's ever seen. AKA a 3 +1 thing where Zee is being an absolute badass and saving his ass three times and the one time he gets to actually be the one saving her (but only after she saves the literal world).
Relationships: John Constantine/Zatanna Zatara
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	Nothing Fucks with My Baby

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the song NFWMB by Hozier, a long time staple of my JohnZee playlist and a masterpiece of a song.

**I.**

John Constantine is fucked, well and truly fucked and not in the fun way at all.

To his left there’s a nasty looking three headed hellhound of some sort, snarling and slobbering in his direction. To his right a couple of shark heads in suits with their own version of brass knuckles eye him ready to beat him to a pulp if they have to. And directly in front of him, a man with a half skeletal face who he may or may not have swindled out of a few priceless magical artifacts he never should have had his hands on in the first place.

“Any chance we can just solve this with a friendly handshake and maybe a deeply meaningful ‘my bad’?” John says holding his hands up in a surrender, an innocent looking smile on his face.

“You stole from me Constantine, this only ends one way,” the skeletal bastard says his teeth chattering together as he speaks.

From the look on his creepy face John gets the sense it won’t be with a happy ending. This fight is gonna hurt, the snarling beast alone is definitely going to leave some damning new scars. There’s no way he’s getting out of this unscathed, alive maybe, but definitely not unscathed.

“I had a feeling you’d say that,” he grumbles before switching right into Latin. The glass windows in the warehouse around him shatter the shards swirling around as he chants a few more words directing the glass at all his opponents in the room. The sharks take a few letting out shrieking sounds, skeletal must a have a solid protecting spell around him though because they just bounce right off. The hellhound doesn’t even flinch as the glass pierces its skin, well shit.

The sharks recover from their brief setback and rush him immediately. Their brand of brass knuckles hurt far more than a regular pair would, and he should know he’s been punched in the face a fair share of times before in his life.

The hellhound starts pulling at his legs as he takes a few more hits, swinging back his own the best he can and that’s when the tattered holey roof tears open, literally.

The sharks freeze even two of the hellhound’s heads turn up to look at her leaving him lying on the floor bleeding and bruised.

Zatanna swans in like a goddess as she floats down from above, wind and power forcefully whipping around her but not so much as shaking her in the slightest. She’s power and beauty personified in one woman, in one soul. 

_Huh_ , he thinks as he lets his head fall back onto the cool hard concrete, _guess she got my message_.

He can’t hear the backwards magic that leaves her lips considering he’s quite possibly bleeding from the ears, but he can feel it. She emanates power in a way not many do and he’s familiar with hers in ways he’s not familiar with anyone else’s, maybe not even his own.

Her magic swings the sharks back and away from him knocking them all out instantly as she lands her feet on the ground. She deals with the hellhound next as skeletal watches, trembling in fear, just like he should be. She’s an unstoppable force to be reckoned with. 

The creature charges her one of its heads nipping at her long coat, but she doesn’t give it the chance to take a bite. Three chords of bright red magic leave her hands wrapping around each of the creature’s necks as she raises them up a crack forms on the wall behind them just as angry red and she releases the creature through likely sending it back to whatever hellscape skeletal had it raised from.

She gives John a quick look evidently deciding he’s not in danger of dying in the next thirty seconds and turns her attention to skeletal who’s quite literally cowering on the floor now.

She walks slowly stepping right up in front of him and crouches down to meet his eyes.

“Boo!” she says with a wicked little smile and he flinches. She snorts reaching out two fingers and tapping them on his forehead.

“Peels,” she says pushing him back and he lands in loud thud on the ground. She stands to her full height pushing his limp body with the toe of her heel.

“How much of a threat is this one?” she asks looking over her shoulder to John.

He holds up a hand making a so, so gesture. “Low level, no magic, just an asshole with connections,” he says “I’ve seen a few wanted posters for him in Gotham though.”

Zatanna nods her head and turns back to his unconscious form.

“To Gotham it is,” she says waving a hand and saying a few words, a portal appearing underneath skeletal and sending him most likely perfectly gift wrapped on Bats doorstep. She brushes her hands together as if she got even a speck of dirt on her during her show and walks over to where John still lays on the floor.

She crouches down pulling him up by his arm into an upright position looking him over. He already feels his left eye starting to swell up, but he notices with his good right one she’s wearing a purple and black lace corset today, the color looks great on her.

She sighs running a hand through his hair. “Laeh sih sdnuow,” she whispers as her fingers scratch lightly at his scalp. He feels her magic run over him, his split lip heal and his eye go back to normal, there’s still a bit of an ache afterwards, but it’s nothing he can’t live with.

She’s a marvel his Zatanna.

“Thanks for saving my ass,” he says as he looks down at his now healed knuckles.

Zatanna just shrugs like what she just did was no big deal. “Yeah, yeah,” she says standing to her full height. She holds out a hand for him to take, which he does immediately. “You’re buying dinner and telling me what exactly you did to piss this guy off.”

**II.**

He never thought he’d die in a church basement, but in hindsight it’s oddly poetic. The sinner being pulled apart into mere shreds of the man he was in a holy place. He should have known that Papa Midnite was giving him bad information neutrality only applies with the people he likes and John doesn’t make that list. He should have known better than to do this without backup.

If he gets killed, Zatanna’s going to kill him again for not calling her first. The note he left on the fridge probably isn’t going to save him this time.

The two angels, fallen of course and not any of Lucifer’s friends considering he’s in good with most of that crowd, had gotten the drop on him as soon as he arrived trying to track down an ancient text that might finally help them put an end to the terror that Nick Necro has put them through over the years.

Of course Nick’s gotten in with a few nasty fallen angels now, fallen angels with a real pension for torture. They’ve got him strung up on a cross, adding to the symbol of irony he’s already facing.

His white shirt is practically bled through entirely red and he’s no expert but he’s fairly certain the hot poker sticking out of his side will result in a near instant death once it’s pulled out. This, to put it lightly, sucks.

“You don’t look so good Johnny,” the angel with the long hair says as he tugs at the poker a little. John doesn’t give him the satisfaction of a scream, just grits his teeth through the pain.

“I think hell will be getting its wish to get its claws in you for eternity soon,” the angel with the buzzcut says. He pulls John’s chin up to look him in the eyes. “The great john Constantine felled by a couple of angels in a church basement, what a sad end to a sad legacy.”

“At least people will remember me for my good looks, can’t say the same for you two,” John says spitting out some blood in the angels’ face, it’s not his best zinger but he’ll blame the blood loss for that. Buzzcut grimaces wiping the blood from his face with his sleeve.

“We won’t need to be remembered,” the angel says as he grips the hot poker tight. “We’ll be here long after it all burns down.”

The door bursts open just as he’s about to pull at the poker again causing both angels to freeze.

“I don’t think you will be actually,” Zatanna says light pouring in from behind her illuminating her to look damn near like an angel in fishnets and a black long-sleeved crop with silver bars along the edge, she looks like the real ethereal kind of angel not like these assholes.

“Who the hell are you?” the long haired one says and John just starts laughing delirious from both the blood loss and this guy’s absolute stupidity.

“You’re gonna know my name, but not hers?” he says incredulously chuckling around the blood in his mouth, spitting some more out. “They sure don’t make fallen angels like they used to.”

In his very first encounter with Lucifer himself he’d commented on Zatanna and how John was lucky to even be in her presence, they clearly don’t teach them right anymore.

“I’m your worst nightmare,” she says and the air cracks with magic. She cringes at her words though and shakes her head. “You know what I take that back, too cheesy.”

Zatanna smiles her dark blue eyes lighting up with magic, they both move to fight her, but there’s no fight they can win and John can tell from the look in her eyes she’s not up for making this a fight at all. She lifts one arm and says a series of backwards words mixed with Latin he knows she’s picked up from off of his skin. She snaps her fingers before they can even lay a finger on her the pair of angels bursting into bright white light and angry flames, screaming as the light gets brighter. John closes his eyes at the light, opening them when all he hears is the sounds of his own labored breathing and the click of her heels nearing him rapidly. 

The angels are gone, barely a smidge of evidence they were even there in the first place.

A snap of her fingers and that’s it. Problem solved, fight over. It should serve as a reminder to everyone just how capable she is, just how powerful she can be. She may be a hero, she may fight on the side of the angels as it were, but she could ruin a whole lot more if she wanted to. In this moment watching her looking at the magic crackling over her skin and in the air still, looking at the ash around them and the way in moments she’ll fix it all back up like it’s no big deal he’s damn well reminded of her power.

He’s also offended on her behalf that Batman has roughly ten contingency plans in place to fight Superman if he ever goes dark or gets possessed, but he barely has one for Zatanna. She should be ranked in the top ten of supers out there, but half the time they forget to even invite her to the big events. Batman’s playing little league while she’s gone pro and he and the rest of them wouldn’t know what hit them if something ever went bad with her.

“Are they dead?” he asks as she hovers her hands over where the poker is still protruding from his side.

Zatanna shakes her head. “No, but they will be living a life of torture in a pocket dimension covered in nothing but angel banishment sigils. It’s about to be an eternity of temporary banishment and reappearance for them now; which with that ponytail the one had that isn’t even the worst torture he deserves.”

John snorts, she’s not a killer, but damn can she sort out good vengeance when she wants to.

“Sorry baby, this is going to hurt,” she says gripping the end of the poker. “I can’t heal it properly without taking it out.”

John nods. “I can take it,” he says gritting his teeth preparing for the pain.

She gives him no countdown pulling the poker out and he groans through it losing consciousness a moment later.

He comes to an unknown amount of time later to the feeling of three light slaps on his face. He groans opening his eyes and surveying that he’s no longer hanging from a cross, but sitting upright in a rickety old wooden chair, Zatanna is directly in front of him in a chair of her own.

“There’s my idiot,” she says when he meets her eyes.

“Ah, so we’re not wasting any time being mad at me then,” he says stretching to sit up more. He looks down at his bare chest, a mess of drying blood, but not of burns and bleeding holes anymore.

“You were unconscious for the soft worry, so now you get the you’re a dumbass for coming here alone and leaving me nothing but a post-it note speech,” she says resting her hands on his knees.

“I think I’ve heard that one before,” he says with a smirk as a twinge of pain shoots through his side. Healed, but still sore.

Zatanna smiles at him fond and exasperated.

“You have, you’d think it would have sunk into that pretty little head by now,” she says patting him on the chest lightly right above an old sigil scar, she runs her fingers along the edge of it before standing.

“So, you think I’m pretty?” he says standing and feeling every bone in his body creak at the movement.

“I think you’re a lot prettier in once piece that’s for sure,” she says with a sigh. “Next time wait for me, you’re just lucky the meeting at JL headquarters ended early when Booster showed up and got into with Batman about professional decorum.”

“Again?” he says, he might piss off the Bats, but not the way Booster seems to. Zatanna nods in response and picks his coat up from the floor tossing it at him with a little sadness in her eyes when they linger on the blood on his chest. One of these days he’s gonna break the heart of the most powerful woman in the world getting himself killed. 

“Hey, Zee,” he starts ready to thank her once again for showing up and saving his sorry ass.

She cuts him off with a light kiss to the lips. “I know,” she says eyes knowing and a little less sad. “Come on let’s get you out of here before your mere presence bursts the church into flames and I have a whole new mess to clean up.”

He chuckles wincing a bit when he really feels it in his ribs tangling his fingers with hers and following her out the door.

**III.**

If John gets murdered by a ghost he’s going to be so goddamn mad. He’s survived literal hell, but here he is trapped in a closet, isn’t that funny in a not so funny way, about to be suffocated by a ghost.

Zatanna is somewhere in this damn haunted house too and she’s going to embarrassingly find his corpse in a closet. They’d gotten separated when the doors had all slammed shut sticking them both in opposite sides of the house. He has no doubt she’s kicking ass, these ghosts fucked with the wrong girl. She definitely isn’t suffocating in a closet that’s for sure.

Every second the air feels a little thinner the spirit taunting him from outside the door. His vision is starting to get a little hazy when he sees a bright flash of yellow light that might be a hallucination and hears a choked out scream.

The door flies off its hinges after that, the air rushing back in and there’s Zatanna not looking like she even broke a sweat.

“And that was evil spirit number twenty-five. This house is officially de-haunted,” she says plopping on the floor next to him. She makes a move and flicks the light above them on.

“Those ghosts really did fuck with the wrong girl,” he says his words coming out a little breathy as he’s still working to getting his breathing pattern back to something regular.

Zatanna smiles and laughs then tilts her head to the side to look at him.

“You okay?” she asks laying her head on his shoulder.

He kisses her hair lightly and nods before realizing she can’t see the action. “Just catching my breath is all, my love.”

She links her arm through his, and stretches out her legs comfortably her platform heels knocking at his feet.

“No more haunted houses for a while,” she says idly, clearly not even tired in the slightest after a no doubt great show of power as she made her way across this place and to him. She undoes her white bow tie letting it hang loose around her neck. “Ghosts are easy, but such a pain.”

John just snorts in response always in awe of her.

**+I.**

Zatanna rarely needs saving. She’s underestimated by many, either seen as just a showy stage magician or another hero who never truly meets her full power potential out of fear of hurting someone. They’re dead wrong all of them, even the ones who think they truly know her capabilities don’t fully grasp what she is.

But for all her power, for all that John looks at her and sees a goddess, she is at the end of the day only human. A human that needs help sometimes. He’s never been more aware of the fact than he is now as he watches her fall from the sky, plummeting fast towards the earth.

She just saved the world practically singlehandedly; she just used every ounce of magic in her to wipe out an army of monsters and then she found a little bit more in her and lost complete control when she saw the last lingering few creatures trying to tear into him. The energy, the power it took was more than she’s ever let out, more than she may have ever even known she had, he saw her reach into depths she’s rarely touched and yet still been amongst the strongest magics in the world living and dead all this time.

But it had all caught up with her in the very end and now she’s falling.

She saved his life once again and now if he doesn’t use what little energy he has left in him she’s going to pay the ultimate price for it. And quite selfishly he’s going to lose her, a thing he’d never truly recover from.

He moves quick summoning what little power he has left in him as he bleeds from where he’d been nearly ripped to shreds. He shouts out a ramble of Latin, Sumerian and Enochian as he moves running on pure adrenaline creating a barrier to catch her.

Her limp form reaches near him and the barrier works catching her, enveloping around her and settling her down into his arms softly. He falls to the ground holding her tightly to his body. He checks for her pulse finding it steady and only slightly weakened. He breathes out a sigh of relief resituating them so that he’s lying on the dirt, Zatanna comfortably settled on his chest. 

He moves a hand and it pulls away bloody, but he knows it’s all his and not a drop of it hers thankfully.

“Ouch,” she says her voice a little scratchy as she moves still staying close to his side.

John lets out a little laugh running a bloody hand through her hair assuming she won’t mind considering the situation.

It takes her a minute but she shuffles moving up on her elbows and resting a hand on his chest. She looks tired still, but far more alert. She should probably be unconscious still, just about anyone other than Dr. Fate would be. But not his girl, she bounces back like no other.

“Thank -,” she starts and John cuts her off with a groan.

“Don’t you dare go thanking me, you just saved the world from certain doom and saved my pathetic life for the hundredth time in the process, you deserve the thanking and a hell of a lot more,” he says running a hand down one of her bare arms wincing a bit when he leaves behind a light trail of blood. “They damn well better build a statue of you in a least Justice League headquarters, maybe even every major city as well.”

Zatanna smiles soft and tired.

“I don’t need the glory,” she says moving to sit up and John follows, if she can manage to he damn well better do the same, he’s done far less today than her.

She doesn’t need the glory, it’s true, but god does she deserve it. She’s the strongest of them, the bravest. A powerhouse among gods in tights and billionaires in bulletproof pleather.

“At least let me fix this up,” she says gesturing to his, well everything that’s scratched to hell some of the marks superficial, some a little deeper. He grabs her hands just as she’s about to raise them, the backwards magic of healing already at her lips. He entwines his fingers with hers.

“I won’t bleed to death before the calvary arrives late,” he says tugging her in close imploring her with his words and his eyes to just settle for a moment, she’s powerful but she doesn’t have to fix everything.

Zatanna sighs and tilts her head to his. “Just a couple of Band-Aids will do then, huh?” she says her joking tone a little quieter than it usually is.

He smiles keeping her as close as he can. They’re quiet for a moment just breathing each other in, even if his breathing is a little labored and hers is a little slower than usual.

The sun rises just as the calvary finally arrives. Batman and every Justice League member he could muster up step out weapons and power at the ready and stare at the ruins Zatanna has left behind. Ruins that John knows for a fact once she’s feeling 100 percent again she’ll come back to and repair, because her power is great and world shattering, but it’s also good and world building. He makes a mental note to cash in a favor with Swamp Thing so that she doesn’t have to come back here and fix it all up even if she can.

Diana is the first one seemingly broken from her revelry at the scene before them when she steps over to them congratulating them both on a job well done.

“All I did was catch her hail Mary throw, this,” he says gesturing out at what could have been a full out apocalypse. “This was all Zatanna.”

Diana smirks impressed and offers them both a hand to stand.

“Well then, well done to you my friend,” Diana says. “You’ve done the world a great service today none of us will ever forget.”

“I did alright,” she says humble as ever. She and John support one another all the way to the large ship the whole gang arrived on. John talks her up the entire time he’s being patched together by the resident Justice League doctor, aka Alfred who’s definitely not a doctor but knows well enough what he’s doing.

A slew of heroes stop by congratulating her on a job well done and she simply shrugs it all off not wanting the praise. She always says she likes to have her ego fed on the stage, not in the field and that’s never been more clear than it is now.

It’s all her even if she doesn’t want people to high five her for it, it’s always all her. Even when they’re working hand in hand, side by side, it’s her that gets it done every time.

And maybe after this finally Batman will make that contingency plan and everyone on this plane of existence and the next will learn not to fuck with Zatanna Zatara.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [alecmagnuslwb](https://alecmagnuslwb.tumblr.com/)


End file.
